Yeah! I got my first award!

As you can see... its been a while since I've posted on here. But I was encouraged today to discover that I have been given a blog award from Judy (check out her blog- shes got some great stuff) !

I will complete the process and pass it on soon- there are many many blogs out there that I love and that inspire me in my crafting, it will just take me a little more time than I have right now (Hubby will be home soon and coonhound is harrassing me for a walk! :o) I will post some more later this week- including some crafty gifts I made!

Sweetest Candy

I am in awe of how giving some many in the crafting/blogging/MB community are- especially with blog candy. Enfys has some amazing blog candy out there right now. Personally I love her blog and get excited everytime she posts something on the Cricut MB- all of her work is awesome! You should check it out too!

Hooray for Dad!

Despite my lack of blogging lately I actually have been pretty busy making cards (and 1 layout)... it's just that the cards keep creeping to the mailbox before I get a chance to take pictures! Before this whole card making thing started for me... I really don't remember buying that many cards. I would think I'd remember too- I never just stopped by the store to grab a card real quick. No, I practically pulled up a chair in the card aisle and camped out the whole day as I read through each and every card to make sure that the on I picked was the perfect card made just for that person for that occassion. Maybe that's what it was... I was avoiding giving people cards before and now I'm just using every possible excuse to make a card. Now every little event has become card worthy. But it is at the expense of my other two hobbies- scrapbooking and beading, which have fallen to the wayside since I am always needing to make a card for someone. Not that I mind too much. I am enjoying making cards and getting better at it too. And maybe it's kind of nice to be thinking about others more often (I don't know... this could be a stretch). But, I am getting a lot faster at it & finding those small morsels of time that I can work on them. So hopefully I will find more and more time for scrapbooking and beading to creep back in- I hope so!

I've always wanted to try a crop or scrapping with a friend. Living in Tally does not make this a likely prospect. But, finally I got a chance to do this with my friend Laura. She loves scrapbooking but had never heard of a Cricut (gasp! I know- I'll give you a minute to recover

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she cut everything with an exacto knife
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sorry, that didn't help, more time?okay
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alright, resuming), so I did the only thing a responsible Cricuter could do and I took mine over to share. It was great! My husband got to borrow their garage to start on his first woodworking project (I can't wait for my Adirondack chair!), our dogs got to play *read: "My dog terrorized her dog"*, and so did Laura and I (I tried not to terrorize Laura)! I used the time to make my Father’s Day cards. Now normally this is a project that would have taken 2 weeks for me to accomplish- but I actually finished them (YAY!)… well sorta. I kind of glued my FIL’s on backwards- it looked great except that he would have had to open the card from the wrong side! Soooo… I did have to go back and fix that (as I did not want to admit what I at the time!) :oP

Anyway, here they are… the finished product of that day.

This one is for my Dad- I used LL and paper from DCWV Stack 6:

This one is for my FIL (he's from SoCal and this car paper is sooo him). I used LL for "DAD" and DC for the palm tree:

I had an extra palm tree that I was going to add to the inside, but it didn't quite look right... so I added it to the back.
Okay... well that's enough for today! Thanks for looking I hope you enjoy!

Mother's Day 2

While I should be working on my Father's Day cards (which I'm not)- I still haven't posted the rest of my Mother's Day Cards. I made both of them from the Diagonal Double Pocket Fold tutorial at SplitcoastStampers. The first one is for my Mom- she loves turtles. The turtle was from SYI amd the phrase and "{2U}" are from LL. This one was for my MIL. The flower is from JOTS and on the bigger tag I put a poem posted on the cricut message board by TonyaGibbs. They were a pretty big hit- my 10 year old sister-in-law commented that my cards look professional. Knowing how brutally honest 10 year olds can be... that made me feel good! TFL!

Graduation Bouquet

Before we went on our trip to TN & KY (see post below) I finally got to give my sister her graduation gift for getting her Master's- YAY! We wanted to give her some money to get a double diploma frame (one that holds her BA and MA diplomas together). My parents went in on it with us and I used the bouquet to display the cash. This was my first time making one- and I definitely learned some lessons for next time- but I'm kind of proud of (especially after seeing my sister's face when I gave it to her!). I should have used a bigger basket and planned my placement better (I kept ripping the styrofame in the base so the pencils would keep falling over). Oh well.... here are the pictures. Let me know what you think! TFL and Go Bulls!

Hillbilly Pilgrimage

So it has been almost 2 weeks since our pilgrimage to Kentucky and I think I'm still in recovery. We had a great time- but it was a whirlwind of a trip- especially for us. We live in Tallahassee, so we had to drive down to St. Pete Friday morning to fly to Knoxville that afternoon (Tallahassee does its best to be a black hole- sucking you in with ungodly high airfare). This means that when we came back- we didn't get to Tallahassee until 2am. Tuesday morning- ugh! Anyway, when we got there we took a quick tour of the UT campus (finally my hubby could see the most glorious stadium in all of college football). After eating at Calhoun's on the river we only had a little time to explore before bed.

Saturday we got up bright and early, spent the morning visiting family (they are a hoot!) and then off to Richmond,Ky for a wedding. The wedding was very nice, we all had fun seeing some of our old family friends. The guys got a little bit more of a glimps of Harlan as the Bride and her parents were from there. One of my dad's friends flew out from California to be at the wedding- poor guy missed the ceremony due to bad directions. It was great to see him though- for us he was the life of the party (when my brother-in-law wasn't dancing) and he may have taken more posed pictures than the wedding photographer (I think he even had her smile for the camera)!

Sunday we got up really early so that we could drive to Harlan (or the "Homeland") for church- which was great! After church we did some visiting and then some exploring. The exploring part was the main point of the trip for me. I *cough* miss going to Harlan and really wanted my hubby to see what it is like there. Even though I didn't grow up there, it is a huge part of my family and who I am. A couple of our favorite sites along the way (just to clarify, these do not reflect my family or who I am :o):

We then got to "go across the mountain" and see my mom's family. Whoa boy- this was truly the highlight! When I say backwoods- I mean backwoods! But I love it! And it was great to go back, especially because Jesse (hubby) got to meet my Aunt Rock and Tom Jack. He has heard so much about them and with names like those, who wouldn't want to meet them!? Unfortunatly our visit was short, but we really enjoyed it. Here is a picture of my Aunt's store (not exactly in operation now, just a gathering place for people to chat).
Monday we headed back to Knoxville but we got to stop in at Cumberland Gap on the way. Did I meantion that the whole trip was freezing?! It was kind of a fluke thing- but it was in the 40's a lot of the weekend- coming from FL, I was not prepared for that! But the GAP was beautiful and it was kind of a nice way to end the trip. I love going there. Well I know that was long and has lots of pics but trust me- I could have said A LOT more! I'll just have to save that for my scrapbook!

Mother's Day- Part 1

As soon as I saw the "I Believe Note Box" created by Rachel on her blog :http://wonderfullywhimsy.blogspot.com/ I knew that it would be perfect for my mother-in-law. So for Mother's Day, hubby and I made a similar box for quotes and Bible verses about God's grace. I tried so hard to get this done early so there would be no rushing- but of course Hubby couldn't decide on a title. Eventually we decided on "God's Heart"- I'm not sure the title is obvious because after many frustrating trials with cut outs, I ended up having to stamp the hearts. Oh well. We got it out on time and my MIL loved it! Whew!
Here are a couple pics (butterfly paper is DCWV, CS is from walmart):

This shows one of the cards that are in the box- I think we had 16 total.

Thanks for looking- I'll post my Mother's Day cards and graduation gifts when I get back from Kentucky!